Oliver Burkeman on Deep Time

A book review, apropos the author’s conversation with Sam Harris

Last week I got to draw a portrait of the columnist and author Oliver Burkeman for Sam Harris’ Waking Up app. (See other portraits here.)

Their conversation was as enlightening as it was terrifying. The stark truth of how very finite your existence in this plane of consciousness is can jolt you awake pretty abruptly. Kind of the way you feel walking out of a church after a funeral service; realising the banality of the quotidian anxieties you had before walking in.

I tore through Oliver’s fantastic new book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals on account of my very complicated relationship with time.

Over the past 14 years, I’ve been a syndicated comic strip cartoonist, which means I’ve lived under the shadow of a looming due date every day of my life since signing that contract. My ensuing dance with the dreaded deadline demon has changed my very perception of time, how psychological time is perceived as I get older, and how it relates to the notions and laws that Burkeman delves into in this book: most specifically, Parkinson’s Law* and Hofstadter’s Law.

Sidenote: *I’ve written about Parkinson’s Law before, in elucidating my weekly process of working from a calendar instead of a to-do list to ensure you have a realistic idea of how long to allow for the work you have to get done.

The exploration of Psychological time VS. Clock Time is a fascinating part of the book. Not only as to how it changes once you’ve practised meditation and explored your relationship with the mind over time, but also when cross-referenced with the work done by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky on the Remembering Self VS. the Experiencing Self and the numerous “cognitive illusions” that affect human judgement.

Burkeman’s writings on Hofstadter’s law were enlightening, particularly as it pertained to allowing slack into our schedules: nothing ever takes the amount of time you plan it to take, no matter how carefully you plan.

Efforts to influence the future, the special kind of anxiety that comes from trying to control things inherently out of your control (ie. my regular trick of over-planning to try and leave for the airport 4 hours earlier than I need to.), and the un-ending stress related to uncertainty are all deeply explored in the book. It’s comforting to know I’m not alone in my madness.

I remember in my twenties I was so frustrated with personal time inconsistencies that I wound my wristwatch forward ten minutes. In an effort to be early, I was still arriving everywhere right on time (which is late).

Since then I’ve ascribed to the “Early is on time, On time is late, Late is unacceptable” model with wildly varying degrees of success.

My mum and stepdad both use spreadsheets for their trip planning; knowing exactly what they’ll be doing on every hour of every day they’re on holiday. There is utility in maximising your time and making sure you don’t miss out on doing anything, but there is also a lot of enjoyment that comes from having no spreadsheet or plan whatsoever.

The most memorable travel experience I had was in Paris, alone for a few days on my way to a conference. I had no schedule. I just wandered around Paris with no plan except ‘to get as lost as possible and try to find my way back to the hotel again’. I ended up circumnavigating the entire city on foot and making all kinds of accidental discoveries.

“We do not rest satisfied with the present…. So imprudent we are that we wander in the times which are not ours and do not thinkof the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us.”

~ Blaise Pascall

The chapter on Rediscovering Rest was another great journey: that feeling you get when you sit and read a book, knowing you have a million other things on your to-do list that you ‘could’ be doing instead, gnawing away at your subconscious until you’re overcome with the desire to check your phone/email/slack/tick another shallow work item off your list.

Sidenote: I read a great book by Alex SooJon Kim called “Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less*” that also explores a lot of the concepts in this chapter: Why actually uncoupling your obsession with getting to the mythical “To-do list zero” or “clearing the decks”, is a good thing. I love both of their writing on “waiting for the absolutely perfect moment to start that important project”, and why it is a fallacy.
*Affiliate Link

It bears repeating that there really will never be a moment in time when the conditions for the work you’re intending to do are completely perfect. You’re in the right mood, your to-do list is empty, your computer is perfectly organised, your apartment is clean, your hair is done, your space is completely free of distractions. Maybe one or two of these things can be so, but never all of them. You just need to prioritise the things that need to be done and do them. Rather, you need to learn to say NO to everything else.

Eat the frog. Do the most important, hardest thing first in your day and you’ll never have regret when 5 pm rolls around. Among other key takeaways, this is a valuable one. It isn’t particularly new, but it is worth reiterating.

Also explored in the book is the notion of the Last Time Meditation. I’ve written about this Stoic practice before because I find it a very quick way to become mindful of an experience when I’m getting buried in my head. This happens often. Burkeman credits Sam Harris with the practice, (since it appears in the Waking Up app under the Stoic Meditations section by William B. Irvine), but the practice goes back to the days of Marcus Aurelius and remains very effective today.
Both Irvine and Ryan Holiday have written about the positive psychological effect that particular meditation can have on your wellbeing, despite being a relatively morbid exploration of the finite nature of time, life and the experiencing self.

The bottom line is: if like me, you’re tied up in the anxiety of the future-chasing mindset, you may be better served to adopt some of the insights from this book to just ready yourself for the uncontrollable future. There are things beyond our control; the one thing we control is our reaction to them.

“I don’t mind what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom. It is a timeless spiritual truth: release attachment to outcomes, deep inside yourself, you’ll feel good no matter what.”

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Originally published at https://www.jasonchatfield.com on December 7, 2021.